Blurred Memories
by Kami-Kyun
Summary: When the Pharaoh has reclaimed his memories and is about to rejoin his family and friends in the afterlife, something shakes his world violently, leaving to wonder if he will ever be the same again. No yaoi, post-series.
1. Chapter 1

The young boy lay on his knees, shaking with tears. "Yugi," a soft voice said comfortingly while placing a hand on his shoulder. "Don't be on your knees, you won, you should be happy."

Yugi sniffled. He raised his head to look his Yami in the eyes. "How can I? It's all over, and I won't get to see you anymore!" His head fell, and the tears started flowing faster now. "Aibou, I'll never really leave, I'll still be with you in spirit." Yami assured the younger boy, pulling Yugi's chin up so he could look in his eyes.

"But it's not the same!" Yugi cried, throwing himself in Yami's arms. Yugi kept crying, thoroughly wetting Yami's shirt. "Shh, Aibou," Yami whispered, stroking Yugi's hair. "It will be alright. You've become stronger with me here, and I know that if I'm still here, I'll just hold you back from your true potential. You've surpassed me Yugi."

Yugi bit his lip, trying not to cry. "Say your true name, and the doors will open!" said Ishizu. Yami walked in front of the doors that would grant him access to the afterlife. "My name is Atem!" he said with confidence. The whole room shook, and the doors slowly opened, revealing a blinding light coming from whatever was behind them.

"Don't ever forget us okay?" Anzu said through her tears. "We'll always be friends!" Jounouchi shouted happily even though he was tearing up as well. Yami smiled and nodded his head. He started walking towards the opening in the door.

_No…no, it can't end like this…! _Yugi quickly brought himself to his feet and ran towards the pharaoh. Yami heard Yugi's footsteps and turned around but barely got a glimpse of him and Yugi ran into the gap in the door. "What? Yugi, wait!" Yami yelled and raced towards the doors, but a dark shape pressed him backwards. "Yugi! Wait!" Yami got to the doors, but it was too late. The doors were closed and Yugi was gone.

Everyone stood around the doors in shock. What had just happened? Yami was still in the present, but _Yugi _had gone to the afterlife. Yami walked towards the doors again, and said, "My name is Atem." The doors didn't open. "I said, my name is Atem!" Yami started pounding on the doors, repeating his name over and over again, trying to get the doors to open back up.

"Atem, stop!" Marik grabbed Yami's shoulders and pulled him away from the doors. "The doors only open once for each person. You can't open the doors again, I'm sorry." Yami broke away from Marik's grip and slumped to the stone floor. His mind was blank except of the thought, _How could I have let him do that? I could have stopped him, I could have!_

But couldn't think even that for too long because Yami felt a breeze go by, then a cold arm wrapped around his throat. "Wha-" Yami said but was cut off by a silver knife that was pressed to his lips.

"Anyone moves and he's dead!" said someone from above Yami's head. _I know that voice…_

"Bakura!" Jounouchi shouted. "I thought you were gone for good!"

"Bakura, let him go!" Anzu's voice.

"Ha! Why should I? He only just _ruined _all of my plans!" Bakura pressed the knife harder on Yami's mouth.

"Bakura, how are you even here!?" Marik asked. "The pharaoh killed you in his memories!"

"Yes of course he did, I was there! I remember! But you should know better than anyone else where souls go when their bodies are discarded, _Tombkeeper_. Hm, let's take a guess. Anyone?" Bakura looked around at the circle of people. No one offered any guesses. "Oh well, I guess I'll just tell you. When a soul is prepared to go to the afterlife, it must go through a little _test_ if you will, to determine if it gets to continue its' journey to the afterlife."

"This test is where the lord of the dead, Anubis, will weigh your sins against the feather of righteousness on a scale. And if your soul is clean, you get to continue to the afterlife. But, if your sins fall on its' side of the scale, your soul is devoured by Ammit, Anubis's pet demon. As you can imagine, there is quite a long waiting line to get to this test, what with so many people dying every day. I was in that line, but I escaped and took a 'shortcut' to the afterlife. Then I just had to find the exit, which were these doors, and wait for an opportunity to get out. Any more questions?"

"Yes," Ishizu said stepping towards Bakura. "Why are you here now? You could have just stayed in the afterlife and had a peaceful rest of eternity."

Bakura looked down at Yami and grinned. "Well, like any good villain, I had to get my revenge." Yami's eyes went wide.

"Bakura, please wait! We can negotiate here." Ishizu said.

"Negotiate? Ha!" Bakura scoffed. "You have nothing I want!"

"I beg to differ," Marik said. "Atem going back to the afterlife was a special case, he had trapped his soul in the Millennium Items and was able to manipulate the Items to get in. You, on the other hand, are just a soul that has come to the realm of the living without a means to travel back to the afterlife. In short, you're trapped here now."

Bakura's eyes widened. "But I'm sure that if you release Atem, we can figure something out." Marik said. Bakura glared at Marik, and Marik looked back with a cold stare. "Tch," Bakura grumbled and let Yami fall onto the stone. Jounouchi ran up to him and pulled him away from Bakura. "Fine! You've got me then!" No one moved. "Well, what do you want me to say?! 'I'm at your mercy, please spare me?' Because that is never going to happen!"

In truth, no one really knew what to do. They had all thought that it was going to be over after this. Atem goes to the afterlife, and everyone else would get on the boat back to Japan. That's it. No one had expected this. Rishid stepped forward and grabbed Bakura's arms and led him up the stone stairs to the cars that they had arrived in. He didn't protest.

Everyone else followed them, Marik and Yami bringing up the end. "I'll follow you out, I…I want to-" Yami struggled for words. Marik placed his hand on Yami's shoulder. "I'll be waiting at the top of the stairs." Marik whispered, a knowing smile on his face. He turned around and started towards the stairs. When Marik's feet disappeared from Yami's sight, he turned and walked up the steps to the doors of the afterlife. He walked around the rubble that was once the Millennium Tablet, it and the Items that it held sunken into the ground. He blinked and continued towards the doors. He placed a hand on them, and after a moment of silence, he whispered, "I'll be back, and I'll rescue you. No matter how long it takes." Yami closed his eyes and swallowed a sob. "I promise."


	2. Chapter 2

"Yugi, wait!" were the last words that Yugi heard before the doors slammed shut, blocking him from Yami and the rest of his friends. _I'm sorry everyone. Don't worry. It's going to be better this way._ _Well, as long as I'm here, I might as well take a look around. _The first thing that he noticed was the white light that was almost blinding. As his eyes adjusted, he could see that there was a long hallway in front of him, similar to the halls in the Pharaoh's palace. He started walking down the hallway, noticing the beautiful carvings and hieroglyphs engraved on the walls. The vaulted ceilings and shining stone floors gave Yugi a serene feeling, almost like he was dreaming.

When he reached the end of the hallway, he was standing on a platform that had steps that were halfway submerged in a small water garden. Occupying the garden were soft pink and white water lilies floating in the blue-green water, a small waterfall in the corner that was framed by stones of varying size and color, and Lilly-pads connected to the bottom of the pond by wavy green stems. Yugi also noticed that brightly colored fish were silently swimming through the waters, their presence revealed by the bubbles that floated to the surface. He looked up and saw the bright sun shining down, and averted his eyes.

Upon doing this, he saw that three of the walls had thin wooden benches suspended above the water, and on top of one, was a white towel. _Why would a towel be here?_ Yugi thought, looking around. And he saw, in the midst of his gazing, he had missed one important part of the garden. A young woman, with long brown hair, was relaxing next to the waterfall. She was naked except for a white slip that hung loosely around her shoulders. She almost looked asleep. Not wanting to wake her, Yugi started to back up into the hallway, but the girl's eyes flitted open.

"Hey, who's there?" She looked around and her gaze fell on the tips of Yugi's shoes that weren't hidden behind a wall. "Don't be afraid, come on in."

"Well, I'm not afraid of you, it's just…uh…you're kinda naked and…" Yugi said, his face flushing with pink. "Oh! Sorry, sorry!" The girl grabbed for her towel and wrapped it around herself. "All clear now!" she said, a giggle in her voice. Yugi peered around the edge of the wall and got a better look at the girl. She was about a foot taller than he was, and had light brown eyes.

"My name's Mana! What's yours?" she asked, holding out one of her hands to shake. Yugi shook her hand quickly, for he feared that without the support of two hands, that towel would fall to the floor. "My name's Yugi. I feel like we've met before, have we?" he asked, squinting to look closer at Mana.

"Hm…well what timeline are you from?"

"Excuse me? What?" Yugi asked in confusion.

"Like, what year were you born?" Yugi gave her the year he was born, but only after thinking about it for a few seconds._ That's odd, _he thought. "Oh," Mana said, face falling a bit. "Then I guess I wouldn't know you." _I could have sworn that I've seen her somewhere before. Maybe on TV? _Yugi pondered this for a while, but his thought process was cut off by Mana's question.

"…so are you ready to go?"

"I'm sorry, can you repeat the question?"

"Ra Almighty, you really _do_ have bad hearing!" Mana said in exasperation. "You should get that fixed. But anyway, I asked you if you're ready to go."

"Where are we going?" Yugi asked, getting more confused by the second.

"Didn't they explain this to you after you passed the test? I'm going to lead you to the check-in, where they'll figure out exactly _how_ you died, and…" Mana rambled on about the process of "checking in" while Yugi thought, _That's right. They all think that I'm just a soul arriving in the afterlife._

"…got that Yugi? Now are you ready to go?" she asked again.

"Oh, well yeah I guess. But first-"

"Good. Now follow me." Mana grabbed his hand and lead him down the steps of the garden. "Now, don't worry. The water's warm, and you'll get new clothes at check-in anyway." She pulled him into the water and they slowly waded across. _She was right, this is nice. _Yugi made sure to avoid crashing into any of the water plants as Mana dragged him along. As they stepped out of the garden, Yugi expected to feel heavy because his pant legs would be soaked, but he felt light. He looked down and saw that his pants were perfectly dry.

"EH?! Yugi, why are your clothes dry?" Mana asked, surprised.

"I don't know," Yugi said, not knowing the answer himself.

Mana shook her head in disbelief but pulled on Yugi's arm and lead him through a door that was opposite the entrance across the garden. Mana and Yugi walked through many halls that looked exactly the same as the first: white, high ceilings, beautiful carvings. Yugi would have gotten lost if it weren't for his guide. There were many doors as well. The doors were perhaps the only thing here that differed from one another. Some doors were solid colors; but not just regular colors, vivid shades of any color that you could imagine! There were some doors that had hieroglyphs on them, some had pictures of Egyptian gods or goddesses, and some even had Ancient Egyptian versions of Duel Monsters!

After many twists and turns, they arrived at their destination which could only be described as "woah". Yugi dimly recalled that this looked like the pharaoh's throne room. _This must be its afterlife version._ Nothing about the room was dark, as you might expect of a place where the dead roamed, but then again, neither was the water garden. The only things that were different were the hundreds of people clustered around, and standing where the throne used to be were the six priests, minus the Millennium Items.

Yugi's eyes were wide open when Mana looked at him and said, "Well, all we have to do now is wait in line!"

**Hahahaha, they have to wait in line! Oh, I'm too tired. Oh well! Please review, I promise that we'll get back to Yami/Atem's POV soon! See you soon~!**


	3. Chapter 3

As Yami walked up the stone stairs, he could hear nothing from above. Right about now, he would have expected at least a little noise. Sure there would be some tears shed because of his departure, but he would have thought that Honda and Jounouchi would be arguing over who got to sit in the front seat, or Kaiba would be making some crude comment about Jounouchi's outfit. But instead of these more happy sounds that Yami had imagined would take place after he left, reality replaced with dead silence.

After Yami's eyes adjusted to the bright desert sun, Yami saw that everyone was standing around, not knowing what to do. Out of the corner of his eye, Yami saw Ryuji walking over to the Jeep where Ryou was resting. He hadn't come downstairs with everyone because he was recovering from his fall down the stairs when Bakura had left his body to enter the pharaoh's memory world. Ryuji shook Ryou awake, and told him the news in a hushed voice.

Ryou shot up from his makeshift bed in the backseat. "What?" he asked in disbelief. Yami walked towards the Jeep to prove that what Ryuji said was really the truth. Ryou looked at Yami, and seeing that the Millennium Puzzle was not hanging around his neck, he whispered, "So…so it's true. Yugi really is gone…" Yami winced at Ryou's words and looked away. Somehow, with the words being spoken for the first time, Yugi's absence hit Yami full on. It was real now. Yugi was gone, and there was nothing that he could do.

"Hey!" Bakura's voice was sharp and clear in the heavy air. "Are we going to get moving or not? I doubt that any of you _want _to stay in the heat any longer than I do!" Ryou's eyes popped open. He threw off the jacket that was serving as a makeshift blanket and started to climb out of the Jeep. "Wait! Ryou, you really shouldn't be-" Ryuji said while trying to keep Ryou in the car and out of the hot sun. Ryou pushed Ryuji away and jumped out of the car. But he didn't get five steps away before he froze. Bakura's gaze drifted over to the Jeep and when he saw Ryou, he smirked. He walked towards Ryou and got as close as he could before Rishid grabbed his arm to keep him a safe distance from Ryou.

"Well…isn't _this _a sight?" Bakura sneered at Ryou. "Spirit and host, reunited again, face-to-face." Ryou trembled. "What? No, 'Welcome back Bakura, I missed you so much'?" he grinned menacingly.

"We-we were _never _friends…_Bakura_." Ryou spat out Bakura's name like it was poison. "Why are you here?" Now Ryou's voice took on a tone of panic, like he just realized that the spirit that had lived inside him was back. "Oh you're so cold, Yadonushi. You've changed." Bakura said, feigning hurt at Ryou's words. Ryou gulped as he looked at Bakura. "Answer the question!" he suddenly shouted, surprising everyone but Bakura.

Bakura rolled his eyes. "I'm sure that one of your friends can tell you all about our situation on the way back. I'm far too tired to do any more explaining today." Bakura yawned and stretched his arms above his head. "Let's get going, shall we?" he asked, speaking as if it wasn't a question, but more like a command.

Everyone looked at each other. They did want to get out of the heat, and they needed to start thinking of a plan of action to get Yugi back. Rishid grabbed Bakura's arm and led him to the Jeep that he was driving, along with Honda, Ryuji, and Jounouchi to make sure that Bakura didn't try to make a run for it. The Kaiba brothers got in their own car that they had brought with them, and Marik led the way back to the house that he, Rishid, and Ishizu all shared. That left Ryou, Anzu, Grandpa, and Yami to ride in the other Jeep with Ishizu.

Yami found himself sitting next to Grandpa Mutou, and he realized with a start that out of everyone who had witnessed Yugi's departure, Grandpa would be hurting the most. He had just lost his only grandson, the only family that he had left to carry on his legacy. When Yugi's father had left Yugi and his mother to survive on their own, the two of them had roomed with Yugi's grandpa on his dad's side. But when a few years later Yugi's mother died, Yugi was all alone with no one but his grandfather to raise him. Now, being a few years out of practice in raising a child, Grandpa Mutou mostly left Yugi to his own desires. He let the boy do whatever he wanted, within reason of course. Even so, the only thing Yugi ever asked for was to play games, and thankfully, that was something that Grandpa could supply him with. Even though Yugi was very quiet, he seemed to open up more when he was playing games, and that was how they had bonded, with Grandpa telling great stories about his gaming past, and Yugi listening intently, picking up whatever information that was put out there to learn. It was around his first year of high school when Duel Monsters came out, and that was the same time that Yami had come into his life in the form of the Millennium Puzzle. It was selfish of Yami to think that Yugi was the most important to _himself_, when that was not even close to the truth. Everyone had known Yugi much longer than Yami ever had, and it would make sense that they were closer to Yugi than Yami could ever be. Yami had only been a part of Yugi's life for a couple of years at most, and when he got to thinking about that time that they had spent together, dueling numerous villains and unlocking mysteries, he figured they _were_ friends, but they weren't on the same level as the others. Jounouchi, Honda, Anzu…they were on a level of friendship with Yugi that Yami could never reach, no matter how hard he tried.

Yami felt that he needed to comfort Grandpa, but he also felt that if he did, it wouldn't make a difference. They were all feeling the same way, and the rest of the trip to the Ishtar's house was completely silent.

**Sorry that this chapter was kinda short... but I hope that I cleared up a few things! See you soon! Peace.**


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